Nauset grad heading for Africa

Saturday

Jul 19, 2014 at 12:01 AM

While his compatriots are enjoying the summer sun and surf, or perhaps cutting our lawns, toiling in our local eateries or shops to earn some cash before starting college next fall, Christopher Wingard is prepping for life in Dakar.

Rich Eldred

What does a young man do in Dakar (the capital of Senegal) and why? The Brewster resident has earned an eight-month fellowship with Global Citizen Year so instead of heading straight for Tufts University (he graduated from Nauset Regional High School in June), he’ll spend one year out in the world.

“It’s a bridge year or gap year,” Wingard explained. “It’s a popular practice in Europe. I’m interested in traveling and hope to major in international relations or pre-med (at Tufts).”

Senegal, which is Equatorial Africa, is a long way from Medford (where Tufts is), but Global Citizen Year’s gap year abroad program provided exactly the sort of opportunity Wingard was looking for.

“It’s a youth leadership development program to try to put people like myself in a better position to navigate the world we live in,” he said. “I went to Japan with the [Cape Cod Lighthouse] Charter School and went to Haiti in high school with (teachers) Lisa Brown and Valerie Bell with three other students and that had a strong positive impact on me and made me want to do some sort of traveling. Global Citizen Year has a nice level of training and guidance and also independence to some extent.”

He’ll be on his own in an African village where Wolof is main language for most of that time.

“I’ll gain language and practical skills and it will be cool to have an adventure and be some place so completely foreign to everything I know. That will probably make me question a lot of things,” Wingard reflected.

It’ll be different than Brewster, where Wingard has always lived, but at least no one will be debating dog parks.

“My experience as a Boy Scout has contributed to me wanting to do this,” Wingard noted. “I’m an Eagle Scout, and one of the main concepts of scouting is service to others.”

So what exactly will he do?

“It’s a leadership challenge for the fellows, there are 91 others,” Wingard declared. “First you have to complete a language course with Rosetta Stone and talk with alumni from past programs. Then there’s the finding aspect, every Global Citizen must raise $2,500 to support the scholarship fund so Global Citizens Year will remain accessible to people regardless of their economic status.”

Wingard had to go through an extensive interview process and write several essays to receive $26,000 in financial aid.

“The third thing is building community support. I’m writing a blog that will tell about my experiences and I’ve got 50 people to subscribe to it via email. I’ll be going August 20, to Stanford, California for an introduction where we’ll get to know one and another. The program is in Senegal, Brazil and Ecuador. Just 15 people are going to Senegal,” Wingard observed. “We’ll go to Dakar for five weeks and live with separate families. Every day we’ll do three to four hours of language classes.”

He’ll learn French (he knows some) and Wolof. Wolof is the native language of Sengal, and while it may be obscure, we all know one Wolof word: yam. Unfortunately, that won’t even get you through the main course.

But once he has learned enough Wingard will head to the backcountry where he’ll stay with another family for six months and serve an apprenticeship.

“I hope to do mine in a hospital,” Wingard said. “But I’ll live in the village and assimilate into the community, become proficient in the language and help out. After that there is a capstone project in the community, like teaching English in the schools and they you go back to California for a week to have re-entry training to prevent reverse culture shock.”

That’s in April 2015 and then Wingard returns to Cape Cod.

“I’ll most likely go to local schools and give a presentation on what I learned,” Wingard said.